Does KOTOR dilute the Star Wars Legend?

ultimate_ed · Post by **ultimate_ed** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:25 pm

Reading the thread asking about Darth Vader being a sith lead me to a path of thought and I'd like to hear what the group has to offer.

We all know that KOTOR is set 4000 years prior to the events of the movies to give it a strong separation to effectively eliminate issues of characters and history.

However, I have begun to wonder if the time shift does weaken the concept of the Star Wars universe.

We're told that, with hyperspace travel being discovered some 30,000 years before and being the start of the Republic, there has been little need to change or improve.

As such, the level of technology we see, space travel, massive cities, blasters, light sabers, Jedi, are effectively the same as what we know in the movies.

It seems to really paint a picture of stagnation, even decline. The world of KOTOR looks generally move advanced than the world of the movies. Just look at the computer interfaces in the game, vs. all the flashing buttons and switches of the Death Star and the X-wing fighters from the first movie.

It's also troubling because, at the time of The Phantom Menace, there was much ado made about how they were trying to make everything, ship design, drods, etc, look less advanced that the original movies. Again, the world we're living in with KOTOR is a contradiction to that idea.

Do we have a way to resolve it? Has the Republic been in decline over the 4000 years between KOTOR and the movies? Do we take it to be like Stonehenge, in that the ancient knowledge had been lost and can't be duplicated?

This is by no means intended t be a knock against the game itself. I am thoroughly enjoying my adventures wielding light sabers and traveling the universe on epic quests. It just seems to defy easy explanation. I also don't know if they really could have set it closer to the movie time, since the Sith were supposed to have been wiped out "long ago" according to Yoda and Mace Windu.

Aegis · Post by **Aegis** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:36 pm

The way I look at it, is the same as any other major civilization. During KotOR, the Republic was at it's peak, of both power and technology. Along come the Sith Wars, Mandalorian Wars, Darth's and so forth, the Republic began to face to many challenges, which slowly degraded the quality of life and technology, until the point of 'A New Hope'.

Now, keep in mind that when 'A New Hope' was made, that was the future looked like to them. We now have a slightly dfferent view, because of what our present looks like.

Armisael · Post by **Armisael** » Fri Jan 16, 2004 9:37 pm

I don't really want to get too much into the technology debate, suffice it to say that the Star Forge is significantly more advanced than anything seen since, and it was built some twenty millenia before the conception of the republic itself. Technology doesn't necessarily progress in a linear fashion. Besides, the Coruscant in episodes 1/2 was probably more impressive than anything in KotOR.

However, the Sith as a species didn't exist even at the time of KotOR. There's a fair bit of information on the history of the Sith written here.

Ertani · Post by **Ertani** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 8:32 am

i agree.

one guy in kotor says "every year, the droids get a little smarter, the ships get a little faster." i think this guy's on tattoine. don't know.

anyways, he's right. obviously, after thousands of years, they're STILL USING SWORDS!!

they've reached the limit of progress, other than that. of course, they can use their technologies to design things like da death sta! but-they're not making general populace improvements.

eidospsogos · Post by **eidospsogos** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 11:35 pm

i'd love to type everything that has been discussed on this topic over at lucasforums, but it's way too much to try to reiterate. so here's a link to the thread.

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.p ... ost1427956

there are very good historical reasons for the topic being discussed as well as some obvious, practical reasons and analogies. but i found it all pretty interesting, check it out.

hannibal360 · Post by **hannibal360** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 10:37 am

You must remember that a lightsaber can bounce back the blaster shots and a swrod proves more effective at close combat....since everyone has armor blasters dont do much damage at LONG range but a sword does at close range....

Armisael · Post by **Armisael** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 8:57 pm

Even if armour had some sort of exclusive blaster damage filter, which it doesn't, not everyone wears it. It is pretty silly for there to be so many swords around in this era. I think that in Star Wars generally, sword use was always primarily the domain of Jedi knights (and certain primitive cultures). But it's really just a game design choice, the same way each and every sword, knife and fork is supposedly made out of cortosis -- so that those nifty battle animations don't seem quite as ridiculous as a regular steel sword parrying a lightsaber.

Gizkanator · Post by **Gizkanator** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 11:13 pm

Possible theories:

1. Technology became lost and rediscovered over the years.

2. Technology didn't need to improve, as everything was a-okeyday.

Yeah, my theories suck, but whaddya gonna do.

ultimate_ed · Post by **ultimate_ed** » Sun Jan 18, 2004 11:23 pm

That link to the Lucas forums made for an interesting read. I'm glad I'm not the only one to question it.

On the one hand, I can certainly understand the rise and fall of civilizatiosn and the potential for technology to be lost over time. We've certainly seen plenty of that on our own world.

But, much of that is due to the lack of effective storage of knowledge. I would think that would be much less of an issue wth thousands of inhabitable worlds and computerized data storage that it would be much harder for such knowledge to be lost.

Then again, there's a story, possibly and urban legend, that the reason we don't use Saturn V rockets anymore is because the plans for them have been lost/destroyed and they would essentially have to be reengineered from scratch.